Do you know anybody who resembles these remarks?
Pierre A. Rinfret:
From my perspective:
LIARS AND LYING.
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This is the fourth in a series entitled "From My Perspective" which is designed to help some of those who have exclaimed at one time or another; "Why didn't someone tell me?" or "If I had only known!"
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Sooner or later liars get stomped on because the truth will out whether it is tomorrow or next year or the next decade. Each lie leaves a trail. And the most unfortunate thing of all is that lies tend to have infinite lives!
Liars have to lead a difficult, if not impossible, life. They have to remember each and every detail about their lies, to whom they told them and why they told them. They spend their lives looking over their shoulders to see if any of the lies are catching up with them. They are always on the run; trying to outrun their lies! A liar leads a most miserable and horrible life.
Liars live in a world of fantasy. What is not real they make up. They try to hide their sins and their transgressions in a cloud and web of lies. It is fairly obvious that (1) a liar doesn't like himself/herself as a person, (2) they consider their accomplishments inadequate, (3) they cannot stomach or accept the truth about whatever (4) they are afraid of the truth and (5) they cannot stomach the consequences of the truth. I could go on but you get the point.
There are all kinds of liars and I must say that I have known all of them (I think).
1. The most difficult to understand is the perpetual liar. One of my brothers, who was as brilliant as they come and was a genius according to the IQ tests, was a perpetual liar. I used to tell him that all the time. He lied about unimportant things just as much as he lied about important things. You could not believe anything at all of what he said. If he said that he called you x times in a day (after you had not talked to him in months) you knew he never made a single call at all. He lied about everything and nothing he ever said was credible unless you had been a direct witness to what he was talking about. He lied about the littlest details and the huge ones as well. He lied about everything and nothing at all was ever believable. I got to the point in life where talking to him was, for me,an adventure because it got to be fun to figure out the next set of lies and stories he would make up!
2. The most dangerous liar (they are, of course, all dangerous) is the one that lies only about major or important facts. This is the kind of person that lies about his education, his studies, his degrees, his background, his family, his prior jobs, his war (or military) experiences, facts of all kinds, if he is in an argument and whatever suits him at the moment.
ASIDE: I used to debate Dr. Milton Friedman, (so-called Nobel Laureate in Economics, [there is no such award in economics although all economists that get the Bank of Sweden Memorial Prize in Economics in Honor of Alfred Nobel claim they are Nobel Laureates]). When I debated Dr. Friedman the first time he came up with some "facts" that I did not recognize nor recall in any way (I have almost total recall). I went back to my office after the first debate and looked up the facts only to discover they did not exist. In later debates I took him to the cleaner because he made up his facts to suit his particular argument! In other words he lied in order to win the argument! The way I beat him was to bring to each debate the source material of economic facts! But Dr. Friedman is not alone; too many famous economists lie to high heaven!END OF ASIDE
3.The political liar is legend. Political liars do not care one iota, one bit, one scintilla about the truth or the actual facts. They argue strictly on the basis of their emotions and their concept of what is "right" and what is "justice." We have all meet them. They are the worst kind and it is hopeless to argue or debate them because they "know" and they lie and make up facts to suit whatever argument. The worst are of course, the media who lie and cheat to the ultimate and they have zero conscience and less responsibility. All they care about is winning no matter how they win.It is NOT how the game is played which to them is idealistic nonsense. All they care about is WINNING, no matter how, including lying and cheating to the extreme. Lying and cheating are pretty much the same thing, aren't they?
4. The social engineering liar is among the most dangerous because they want to change the social order according to their vision of what it should be.Most of these social engineers I have met over 5 decades know zilch about the way our country operates, know zilch about American industry, know zilch when it comes to American history and what made this country but boy, oh boy, do they know what they want to change! Even if they have to lie, to cheat they are going to get their way, one way or another!
They lie about anything and everything and the worst of all is that they are self righteous about their lying. When they can't win a social argument with facts they resort to emotionalism (another form of lying). And when the emotionalism doesn't work they lie to high heaven in whatever mode suits them; just as long as they win their argument! Incidentally, my symbolism of the monkey wrench is intentional! My entire experience with these kind of self-righteous, guilt prone individuals is that they lie and lie some more.They know they are lying but they don't care!
5. The most incredible of all is the Community Lie. This is where a mass of people agree silently and without any overt or noticeable agreement that they are going to lie en masse! This also comes under the title of "lying to oneself".
We have all experienced community lies. The Germans community lies were and are too numerous to catalog but the best known is that no one but no one knew anything about the death camps!
When I was a student in France in 1949 to 1951 there was one community lie that I found hard to believe. Now you have to understand that I did combat in France and spoke to and observed the French during that combat experience and later from 1944 to 1945. The great community lie then and now in France is that only a few collaborated with the Germans! Baloney, the whole country collaborated with the Germans and they had no other choice. I am not sure that I would have done any different but they did collaborate! But the entire country denies, to this day, total collaboration.
Here in Nantucket we have a community lie that would be amusing if it were not so pitiful. The community lie is that there is an enormous need for private social care! This island has about 7000 permanent residents and that is it. However about once a week at a minimum we receive requests from charitable organizations here pleading for money. How many people out of about 7000 need social care since there is overfull employment and jobs at relatively good pay are all over the place (Stop and Shop just raised their hourly wage rate from $6.00 to $10.00 for weekdays and to $15.00 for Sundays). I have lived here now for about 6 years and in all that time have only seen two people (one man and one woman) whom you and I might call indigent.
The community lie leaves those who recognize the truth in the lurch. There is little anyone can do when an entire community lies to itself and to others. The community lie is monstrous self deception and it can go so far as to include the entire country. One of the community lies I object to most emphatically is that the Afro-Americans deserve preferential treatment because their ancestors were slaves! But every time anyone gets into an argument about preferential treatment that is brought out as justification. Question: how many Afro-Americans know as a fact that their ancestors were slaves and how many of them had ancestors here? The success of the lie is to communitize it!
Besides which I don't quite get what ancient wrongs are corrected by additional wrongs now. Forgive the pun but two wrongs don't make a right! As everyone knows if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it becomes a community truth. The entire world certainly including the U.S. A. have deceived themselves with community lies.Community lies are OK until they blow up in your face! But the worst part is that even if you did not buy the lie you shoulder the blame!
6. Lies permeate our lives and our existence. There are modern lies, antiques lies and ancient lies. The only thing we know about history is that someone wrote it down. We don't know if they were telling the truth or lying. We don't know if they were biased, prejudiced, anti-this or anti-that. All history is speculation and too much of it is fraud and lies. When I went to France in 1949 I brought with me a footlocker full of classic economic and history books. By dumb luck I happened to have a book entitled "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" which specific edition was quoted by an economist of repute. I looked up the quote and was absolutely shocked to discover that while the beginning and end of the quote was accurate the author had stuffed a whole bunch of words into the "quote". In other words he was lying! It just goes to prove that liars have an endless imagination.
In the meantime, thanks for coming to my site and my best wishes for a happy and healthy life. Pierre A. Rinfret
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